ECRI's Achuthan Sticks To His Guns: The US Recession Still Is Happening

While destroying the myths and biases of the plenitude of long-only talking-heads seems to have been the mission of Mr.Market for the last decade or so, Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI does an excellent job of dismissing the coincident indicator trees for the leading indicators forest in an interview with Bloomberg TV. His 'recession is happening' call from September 30 still stands, proving he does not flip flop like all other so called experts on every up or downtick in the SPY, and is expecting a formal recessionary print in GDP within three quarters, though noting that the recession very likely did not start in Q3. The constant clamoring of the consensus that we will 'muddle through' or that we are firming in hopes we repeat the Keynesian love-fest of 2009 (which he rejects as nothing being indicative of this at all) is eschewed as the man-with-the-best-name-for-anagrams-in-finance gives Tom Keene a little history lesson on the foibles of minute-by-minute coincident (or short-leading) macro data watching (and prognosticating). The ongoing deterioration in the ECRI index (and leading indicators) combined with his noting that GDP tends to revise/revert towards GDI (even though the two should be the same given their either-side-of-the-same-coin nature) and the previous GDI print was much weaker. He ends on a less than optimistic note pointing out that the pace of each economic recovery since the 1970s has been getting lower and lower and cycle volatility has increased helping to confirm his recession-is-happening call.